Cannabis seed-to-sale tracking system a bad idea

A cannabis seed-to-sale tracking system should not be a priority for the federal government.

If every gram of cannabis must have its own barcode, a provincial or municipal model would be preferable, but ideally we need many individual models. Which is to say, no model at all.

Bottom-up farmers, vendors and others in the industry have demonstrated their peaceful actions and their ability to form relationships with the local business community. Even many city councillors have made their peace, however grudgingly, and with the pretense of knowledge.

Suppose this, uh, is true — the gangs of inner-city Canada control the cannabis market. Wouldn’t it make sense for the peaceful connoisseurs to distance themselves?

To grow for themselves and friends, to rebuild the industry from the ground-up, away from that violent element? And at one point, when enforcement is lax enough, open clubs and retail dispensaries for willing buyers.

Seed-to-sale tracking isn’t a remedy for weeding out the gangs and bikers. It’s a barcode on your cannabis, a special number recognized by Health Canada, information for a complex global market.

Trying to operate outside this system, so goes the thinking, is primitive free market fetishism. Perhaps so, but large, centralized nation-states and international bureaucracies dependent on central banking won’t last forever.

And what the Liberals are attempting with cannabis legalization also won’t work.

They are ignoring knowledge of particular circumstances of time and place. Specific times and places matter for human actors in a market economy. The Liberals cannot override market prices if they expect legalization to work for every Canadian, particularly the people who consume it.

There is tacit knowledge within every human being, giving everyone some advantage over others. The ability to trade property, expand and innovate led us to the modern capitalist system.

Overriding this function by dictating plans for all Canadians undermines what makes this market order work.

Government bureaus can’t effectively replace the market.

Human beings are constantly calculating their subjective values in an objective world. Liberal legalization simply can’t cater to these diverse interests. This is an unavoidable fact of reality.

Is there any solution? Any middle-ground the Liberals can perform to appease the manufactured dilemma of “children” and “organized crime?”

Either way, quality of product and consumer choice will make excessive federal controls obsolete. There is already a cannabis market in Canada, the government will either conform to us or waste money with prohibition.